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Cover image for The sleepwalkers : how Europe went to war in 1914
Format:
Book
Title:
The sleepwalkers : how Europe went to war in 1914
ISBN:
9780061146657

9780061146664
Edition:
First U.S. edition.
Publication:
New York : Harper, 2013.
Physical Description:
xxxi, 697 pages : illustrations, map ; 24 cm
General Note:
"First published in Great Britain in 2012 by Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books"--Title page verso.
Contents:
pt. I. Roads to Sarajevo. I. Serbian ghosts : Murder in Belgrade ; 'Irresponsible elements' ; Mental maps ; Separation ; Escalation ; Three Turkish wars ; The conspiracy ; Nikola Pašić reacts -- The empire without qualities : Conflict and equilibrium ; The chess players ; Lies and forgeries ; Deceptive calm ; Hawks and doves -- pt. II. One continent divided. The polarization of Europe, 1887-1907 : Dangerous liaison: the Franco-Russian alliance ; The judgment of Paris ; The end of British neutrality ; Belated empire: Germany ; The great turning point? ; Painting the devil on the wall -- The many voices of European foreign policy : Sovereign decision-makers ; Who governed in St. Petersburg? ; Who governed in Paris? ; Who governed in Berlin? ; The troubled supremacy of Sir Edward Grey ; The Agadir Crisis of 1911 ; Soldiers and civilians ; The press and public opinion ; The fluidity of power -- Balkan entanglements : Air strikes on Libya ; Balkan helter-skelter ; The wobbler ; The Balkan Winter Crisis of 1912-13 ; Bulgaria or Serbia? ; Austria's troubles ; The Balkanization of the Franco-Russian alliance ; Paris forces the pace ; Poincaré under pressure -- Last chances: détente and danger, 1912-1914 :The limits of détente ; 'Now or never' ; Germans on the Bosphorus ; The Balkan inception scenario ; A crisis of masculinity? ; How open was the future? -- pt. III. Crisis. Murder in Sarajevo :The assassination ; Flashbulb moments ; The investigation begins ; Serbian responses ; What is to be done? -- The widening circle : Reactions abroad ; Count Hoyos goes to Berlin ; The road to the Austrian ultimatum ; The strange death of Nikolai Hartwig -- The French in St Petersburg : Count de Robien changes trains ; M. Poincaré sails to Russia ; The poker game -- The ultimatum : Austria demands ; Serbia responds ; A 'local war' begins -- Warning shots : Firmness prevails ; 'It's war this time' ; Russian reasons -- Last days : A strange light falls upon the map of Europe ; Poincaré returns to Paris ; Russia mobilizes ; The leap into the dark ; 'There must be some misunderstanding' ; The tribulations of Paul Cambon ; Britain intervenes ; Belgium ; Boots.
Summary:
On the morning of June 28, 1914, when Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie Chotek, arrived at Sarajevo railway station, Europe was at peace. Thirty-seven days later, it was at war. The conflict that resulted would kill more than fifteen million people, destroy three empires, and permanently alter world history. The Sleepwalkers reveals in gripping detail how the crisis leading to World War I unfolded. Drawing on fresh sources, it traces the paths to war in a minute-by-minute, action-packed narrative that cuts among the key decision centers in Vienna, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Paris, London, and Belgrade. Distinguished historian Christopher Clark examines the decades of history that informed the events of 1914 and details the mutual misunderstandings and unintended signals that drove the crisis forward in a few short weeks. How did the Balkans -- a peripheral region far from Europe's centers of power and wealth -- come to be the center of a drama of such magnitude? How had European nations organized themselves into opposing alliances, and how did these nations manage to carry out foreign policy as a result? Clark reveals a Europe racked by chronic problems -- a fractured world of instability and militancy that was, fatefully, saddled with a conspicuously ineffectual set of political leaders. These rulers, who prided themselves on their modernity and rationalism, stumbled through crisis after crisis and finally convinced themselves that war was the only answer. - Jacket flap.

An authoritative chronicle, drawing on new research on World War I, traces the paths to war in a minute-by-minute narrative that examines the decades of history that informed the events of 1914.
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